"A Journey Through Texas"

       "A Journey Through Texas" is a a first hand account of the travels in the Americas by the Spanish written by explorer, Alvar Nunez Cabaza de Vaca. Cabaz de Vaca is the speaker of the story and as he continues to travel in this new area, he is writing down all of his experiences and the surroundings he is seeing in his journal. The purpose of this journal is to gather information and to also inform the Queen of Spain about the land there and in return gain money and gold. Since he is the one narrating, the story is told in chronological order. It begins with him being led by two Native American women on their way to another Indian tribe. For the most part, the tone is informative and descriptive, but the tone soon changes as he becomes angry at the women. After finding out that the women did what he said because of fear, he began to feign his anger in order to have a certain control over them. Later though, the tone seemed to change back to being informative. The main subject of the journal was exploration and knowledge.
      Throughout the journey, the Indians started to catch the diseases brought by the Spanish and began dying. Cabaz de Vaca used this to his advantage and wrote down emphasis on God because Spain's state religion was Catholicism and also wrote about the importance of religious values. He wrote how he and the rest of the exploreres prayed to God and the Indians' illnesses began to heal. This was also an important part in the story because it showed that the Spanish were already influencing the Indians. Eventually, they reached a new Indian tribe and he noticed that this certain tribe has permanent houses and ate normal food. He especially took note how friendly and helpful they were. This became new and important information because it would show the King and Queen that they were building trust with the Native Americans. Later, they continued their journey and ended up in a another tribe that had great quantities of resources that could be useful for the Spanish. Overall, the story was non-fiction and based only on history.